Maurie Dee McInnis, Louis P. Nelson, eds. Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's University. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019. 280 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8139-4286-5.
Reviewed by Gary D. Sellick (Thomas Jefferson Papers)
Published on H-Slavery (January, 2020)
Commissioned by Andrew J. Kettler (University of South Carolina)
2019 represented an important year for the University of Virginia, being the 200th anniversary of the founding of the illustrious school. The university has used the occasion to celebrate, holding symposiums on its history, concerts by well-known celebrities, and other events to revel in the bicentennial. Two books on the creation of the university, The Founding of Thomas Jefferson’s University and Thomas Jefferson’s Education, have been written using narratives largely from white perspectives.[1] Among all this pomp and celebration, the governing Board of Visitors of the university authorized the construction of a new memorial dedicated to the enslaved laborers employed during its antebellum years within sight of Thomas Jefferson’s famed rotunda. Coming only two years after the horrific events of the Unite the Right rally, the creation of this memorial in Charlottesville comes at a time when UVA, like many other educational institutions, is coming to terms with its legacy in relation to slavery. It is thus timely that Maurie Dee McInnis and Louis Nelson have produced Educated in Tyranny, a detailed, revisionist, and introspective slave-centered study of this storied institution.
Educated in Tyranny provides thorough insights into the creation and early years of UVA, a time when the authors believe the campus (or Grounds, as it is known by students and alumni) resembled a plantation as much as an educational institution. McInnis points out the glaring contradiction of the university’s mission in her introduction when she asks, “what does it mean to have a public university founded to preserve … democratic rights that is likewise founded and maintained on the stolen liberty of others?” (p. 4) This edited work attempts to answer this question while providing compelling analysis on the plight of the enslaved at the university.
The essays in Educated in Tyranny cover the length and breadth of the enslaved experience at UVA, creating a work that contains more detail on this subject than any previous study. This level of detail is both the product of good scholarship and the fact that, while the enslaved are frequently mentioned in broader histories of the university’s founding, this is the first major work focused specifically upon slavery at the institution. The essays are more topically than chronologically arranged, although the first is appropriately “Slavery and Construction,” an overview of enslaved people’s involvement in the building of the university written by McInnis’s co-editor, Nelson, and James Zehmer. The two editors collaborate on chapter 2, “Landscape of Slavery,” a visually excellent description of the evolution of the campus during the antebellum period that makes use both of primary source plans for the institution and computer-animated reconstructions created by the university’s Jefferson’s University Early Life (JUEL) project. Nelson and Benjamin Ford collaborate on chapter 3, “Everyday Life in the Yard,” an examination of the daily routine for the majority of the enslaved employed at the university. McInnis herself writes the fourth chapter on violence at the university, making the excellent point that “enslaved people were daily subject to arbitrary actions of faculty, hotelkeepers, and students and the commands of these different groups were frequently contradictory, making navigating daily life fraught with peril for those enslaved at UVA” (p. 99).
While the experiences of the enslaved at UVA in relation to place is important throughout the book, the second half, beginning with Jessica Ellen Sewell and Andrew Scott Johnston’s analysis of the institution’s hotels, begins a detailed section on the spatial analysis of slavery by analyzing the specific nature of slavery in a particular part of the university. These different areas, designed by Jefferson to create geographical separation between the races, produced different experiences for the enslaved individuals who lived or worked in them. “Proslavery Thought,” a chapter dedicated to the engrained and prevailing ideas of slavery that were espoused in the early years of the university, and written by Thomas Howard and Alfred Brophy, is an outlier here. Considering the content of this chapter, with its broader overview of proslavery arguments concerning the institution and race in the antebellum era, it perhaps would have been better placed toward the beginning of the book. This is not only for thematic reasons but also to give readers an overview of some of the proslavery ideas being espoused at the time. Positioning this chapter next to the essay on racial violence would have been appropriate. Kirt Van Daacke writes the next two chapters, on the Anatomical Theater at the university and the free people of color who lived and labored on the campus. The final chapter, fittingly, focuses on the African American burial ground at UVA and is written by Benjamin Ford.
Like most works on slavery, Educated in Tyranny largely relies on white-authored primary sources. This documentary trail means that most of the authors read these sources against the grain to create a picture of the everyday lives of the enslaved. For the most part, this methodology is admirably performed. McInnis and Nelson have used their expertise in public history and architecture to compile a book that is not only historically relevant and well researched, but also visually stimulating. Indeed, each chapter is complete with supporting documentation, particularly images of the university during the antebellum period, which help readers understand the arguments through multifarious sources. It is also a testament to the scholars involved in Educated in Tyranny that despite the inevitable overlap that occurs between some chapters, so many unique and interesting arguments are made throughout.
Together, the essays are well structured and cross-pollinate in meaningful ways. As in most edited works, some of the chapters work better than others. While some chapters focus heavily, and rightly so, on the roles of enslaved women and children, in others these groups are largely invisible. The index, while excellent in naming individuals, has some stark omissions, including women, Charlottesville, and hotels (on which an entire chapter is based). Also, it would have been good to see more about slave resistance, which, although alluded to, is not explored in any meaningful way. Only one, small section mentions runaways and most resistance is seen through the lens of white misdemeanors, such as the gambling and drinking of students that was apparently facilitated by the enslaved. This is no doubt due to the dearth of primary sources focused on the enslaved, but it does limit the analysis of any deeper resistance that was conducted by this group. These minor weaknesses, however, do not take away from the excellent book that McInnis and Nelson have compiled. With many universities in the United States now reckoning with their slave pasts, many more institutional histories will be written on the subject. Educated in Tyranny provides an admirable model to follow.
Note
[1]. John A. Ragosta, Peter S. Onuf, and Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy, eds., The Founding of Thomas Jefferson’s University (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019); Alan Taylor, Thomas Jefferson’s Education (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019).
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Citation:
Gary D. Sellick. Review of McInnis, Maurie Dee; Nelson, Louis P., eds., Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's University.
H-Slavery, H-Net Reviews.
January, 2020.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54580
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